REPRESENTATION MATTERS.
#and here’s x-men teaching you an important lesson
It’s wild that white America has 50-11 different movies that allegorically reference racism and not to be racist and they still want to build their wall and say the n word.
““When I was about 20 years old, I met an old pastor’s wife who told me that when she was young and had her first child, she didn’t believe in striking children, although spanking kids with a switch pulled from a tree was standard punishment at the time. But one day, when her son was four or five, he did something that she felt warranted a spanking–the first in his life. She told him that he would have to go outside himself and find a switch for her to hit him with. The boy was gone a long time. And when he came back in, he was crying. He said to her, “Mama, I couldn’t find a switch, but here’s a rock that you can throw at me.” All of a sudden the mother understood how the situation felt from the child’s point of view: that if my mother wants to hurt me, then it makes no difference what she does it with; she might as well do it with a stone. And the mother took the boy into her lap and they both cried. Then she laid the rock on a shelf in the kitchen to remind herself forever: never violence. And that is something I think everyone should keep in mind. Because if violence begins in the nursery one can raise children into violence.””
— Astrid Lindgren, author of Pippi Longstocking, 1978 Peace Prize Acceptance Speech (via jillymomcraftypants)
Harry disappears from the wizarding world for a little while after the fall of Voldemort and only like Ron Hermione and Ginny know where he’s gone
but he’s traveling. he considered backpacking Europe, but then he realized he’d had enough of camping for at least twenty years, so he teaches himself to drive and pulls enough strings to get himself an American drivers’ license and and then he’s off on a roadtrip in a beat-up car that’s still fast as anything. he doesn’t use magic if he can help it because it feels tainted, feels like it belongs to the war, feels like it marks him out again as someone with power and responsibility and the weight of a world on his shoulders. and for now he wants to find out what it is not to be a world-saving wizard, but just to be Harry.
and he meets a lot of strangers (he figures it’s safe enough picking up hitchhikers when they’re more than likely muggles and he’s got his wand if anything bad happens) and he learns what it’s like to be just another face, another car on the road and he learns all sorts of stuff on the radio, tries every genre out there. and it’s nice to listen to stuff that isn’t specifically designed to remind him of the wizarding world, but he finds so much of it surprisingly relatable and sometimes he just breaks down sobbing at the wheel and has to pull over.
and one of the hitchhikers he picks up is a veteran, and Harry doesn’t tell him much but he does say that he’s been a soldier, too, and it’s hard adjusting to a life that you never thought would exist because things were so hard that you could not imagine yourself after. hard to think about settling down and marrying the girl you thought you’d die loving. hard to think that not everyone around you is an enemy. were you a prisoner of war? the veteran asks. or undercover? both, says Harry. and lost, not knowing whether I was on the run or on a mission that was taking a year. I got back alive in the end but something—something’s definitely dead, you know?
how old are you, says the veteran. I’m eighteen, says Harry. the veteran raises his eyebrows. but they both know that some armies, some wars, don’t care about your age.
I think the dead thing is me, Harry says one day, when he’s going seventy in a fifty-five mile zone and the sun is setting in their eyes. when I killed the enemy, I killed myself.
and the veteran looks at him for a very long moment and Harry slows down and looks back at him and at last the man says, no. no, you lived. and you’re going to keep living, son, and one day you’ll be ready to marry that girl, if you love her, and now that you’ve got out of the war, it’s time to get the war out of you.
(they almost have a wreck when Harry pulls over to the side of the road, gets out, sits in the grass and laughs through his tears. flowers start to spring up around him and he feels the magic in his core, but this time it’s peaceful and pure and fun. unspoiled. and he knows it won’t always feel this way but for now things are leaking out of him, joyful things, because he is the boy who lived again, the boy who lived after the war.)
Being part of the social justice culture or the “stay woke” culture, I usually thought that the main purposes were to:
1) Unlearn what was taught to you
2) Learn what was never taught to you
3) Educate those around you with the knowledge you have
But you see…
You will come across people that will ask questions that may sound problematic but they just genuinely are confused about the matter and just want to learn
I had a white girl, sweet as hell, that was curious about why White people can’t say the N-word but Black people can say it.
Now… If this was Black Tumblr/Twitter, y'all wouldve ate her alive and spit her out. Like, why would you ask a question like that????
I didnt take any offense to the question, because again, you have to educate.
I broke it down simply…
“Bitch was a term used by men against women… If you call your female friend ‘my bitch’, theres nothing wrong with that… but if a guy did the same thing to his female friend, that wouldnt not look too good…”
Then she understood! She doesnt like when men call her or other women bitches but she noticed how women call each other bitches (almost) all the time in a friendly context.
Some SJW ppl would resort to just straight ridicule. Like relentlessly roast you, and you just wanted to ask a question, get your answer, and just go.
I understand some people would come outta nowhere with smartass comments and deserve that roasting, im 120% for that, but yall really need to learn the difference between those 2 groups of people.
I remember saying/doing something problematic not too long ago. This guy just went off on me, called me stupid, and vaguely explained why what I did was problematic. When I asked for a more in-depth answer as to why it was an issue, he didnt want to explain, he didnt have the “energy” to explain but had plenty of energy to say what i did was wrong and i was stupid to do it.
To this day, I STILL dont know exactly what was wrong but I am avoiding that action for sure.
To cut it shortly for yall,
Some people genuinely dont know what they do/say was wrong. Some ask questions to learn and educate themselves. Relax…
Ridicule or slander shouldnt be a first option to everything, if anything, its more counterproductive. Not to mention yall do this for notes and attention on social media.
ALL. OF. THIS.
Characterization done right.
Steve Rogers in a single gif.
We joke about Steve’s patriotism as his strong suit, but his actual strength was his sense of moral right. His whole philosophy is summed up in the line “I don’t like bullies” in the first movie. Steve loves his country. He loves it enough to be at the front of the line trying to fix what he sees as moral wrong in it.
steve rogers is patriotic in the most real sense: he represents the concept at the core of the american ideal, the concept of freedom that is the reason our political system is designed to adapt and alter itself for constant improvement.
he is not loyal to any momentary leader or agenda, and when those leaders and agendas stand contrary to his core ideal of self-determination and freedom from oppression, he’ll speak up without hesitation.
honestly, i never would’ve thought captain america would be my favorite superhero, but he’s the activist i aspire to be.
Captain America is loyal to nothing but the dream.
The problem with Captain America’s image in the public mind is that people recite the first line of his byword and ignore the last part :
“My country, right or wrong;
if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.”
Not to mention his
speech in Spiderman #537.
My favorite line from the issue:
“This nation was founded on one principle above all else: The requirement that we stand up for what we believe, no matter the odds or the consequences. When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree besides the river of truth, and tell the whole world— —No, you move.”
Steve Rogers is a radical and that’s why I love him.
cool disability psa!
hi everyone! so while the term “handicapped” is really outdated/problematic & we don’t use it to discuss pwd anymore, i still hear good, woke people use it to refer to parking spots/toilets/etc. like “the handicapped stall” or whatever. and i really think they do that bc they don’t know of a better term. so i’m gonna give you one! “accessible!!!!”
any time you’d say “handicapped,” say “accessible”
“oh, he has fibromyalgia, so he has an accessible parking permit” “due to her spinal cord injury, she has an accessible dorm room” etc etc
this is cool for two main reasons! 1 - you’re not using super outdated language and 2 - it puts the focus on the accessibility of the environment, not the personal impairment, which if you’ve done any reading on the social model of disability, you’ll know is a really good thing.
so spread the word, practice better disability politics, and spare me the inward cringe every time i have to hear the word “handicapped”